Jumping in the big pond

Editor’s note: Reaction from the Maryland GOP and more of my personal comments added at the bottom. 

As usual, Michelle Malkin has an excellent diatribe on the immigration fight going through Congress. One thing that concerns me is that the people who are pinning their hopes on the House not passing this may be real disappointed. From the article (no source material cited – perhaps a press release?):

The House Republican Conference today by 114 to 23 passed a resolution introduced by U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) that expresses opposition to the Senate immigration bill. “Today’s vote illustrates overwhelming opposition among Republicans in the House to the Senate immigration bill and the process in which it was developed,” Hoekstra said. “The Republican Conference has always advocated for immigration reform, but the Senate bill is bad public policy that does not reflect our position.” The text of the Hoekstra resolution is as follows: “Resolved the House GOP Conference disapproves of the Senate immigration bill.” “We have always reserved concerns about the policies that it advocates, but until now we have remained on the sidelines,” Hoekstra said. “It is important that we publicly express our opposition to the Senate bill before consideration is complete.”

 I actually commented on the site that 114 to 23 is pretty scary:

On June 26th, 2007 at 10:14 pm, Michael said: I’m getting a bad feeling about the House. If the Hoekstra vote was only 114 to 23, that means we’re talking about probably 40 Republicans who will join most of the Democrats in passing this. The D’s could even excuse some of their more “conservative” members and have enough to pass – remember, they only need 218 and we know Bush will sign this piece of garbage. 

Enforce the existing laws first!!

As most of you know, the immigration bill died for lack of cloture. Here’s what the Maryland GOP had to say about this:

Today, the United States Senate failed to obtain the 60 votes needed to end debate on the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007.  Maryland Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski voted for cloture.  Chairman James Pelura of the Maryland Republican Party made the following statement:

“Today was an exercise of democracy in action.  Americans called their Senators to voice their opposition to the immigration bill and crashed the Senate phone system.  In the end, Senators Cardin and Mikulski joined with 44 other Senators, not even a majority, in support of this very problematic legislation.  Just as our government should not grant amnesty to those who break the law, the Senate should not give amnesty to the current immigration bill.  We need to fix the broken immigration system, and future legislation must respect the rule of law, make border security a priority, and not grant amnesty.”

So it looks like immigration reform is history, at least for this term. However, that doesn’t mean that we should stop the enforcement uptick that’s seemed to be the practice the last six months or so. As I say, enforce the existing laws properly and we’ll see what needs to be tweaked in the next Congress.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

2 thoughts on “Jumping in the big pond”

  1. I agree Michael, illegal being the “Key” word. So we give amnesty to 12 million criminals. First our borders should be secure or next thing ya know 5 years from now we will need another amnesty to excuse another 12 million illegal aliens.

    You also get your wish, I soon will be changing parties. My main reason for doing this is to vote Wayne Gilchrest out of office, and I want to do that in the primaries. Hands down out,with his butt~!!

  2. Actually, if we don’t change the system to allow more people in legally in order to meet the demand for labor, we will continue dealing with more people crossing the border illegally. These folks are coming here to work, and if we don’t allow them in legally, they will come in whatever way they can. Let’s change the law to reflect economic reality.

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